Clinique wanted to do that most difficult of things – appeal authentically to a younger audience. They planned to launch POP – a funky new range of cheaper lipsticks, and PEP – hydrating eye cream for busy bodies, to this particularly cynical audience, who won’t just believe what they’re told or do what you say – however much money you spend trying to convince them.

This millennial audience gets most excited when it becomes part of the brand/product experience. To populate popular culture we had to create inclusive campaigns that put them in control, but equally allowed us to keep a tight reign on the brand’s premium image. Here’s how we did it:

POP

Self-expression rates pretty highly on our audience’s ‘like-to-do’ list. And they have their own social media lexicon to shorthand with each other. We killed two creative birds with one stone – dialing up self-expression to the max – by giving girls the chance to become the lips of the new POP campaign through Cosmopolitan Magazine and Instagram. And then using the lip selfies they sent us to create high impact advertising visuals around our millennial’s favourite social acronyms – expanding reach exponentially. It meant our new audience was literally authenticating Clinique. The winning lips became part of giant, unmissable special build OOH across the country and a press campaign in Cosmopolitan – true modeling fame.

PEP

We created beautiful ‘bag spill’ #ImIn visuals for a digital OOH, online display and social channels. Each ‘bag spill’ showed what you might need in your handbag when you take on interesting adventures. At the heart of every ‘bag spill’ was the Pep Start Eye Cream – and a CTA asking whether you’re up for the adventure – ‘Are you in?’ We launched the campaign with 3 celebrity vloggers – surprising them with real life bag spills and filming them as they took on their individual challenges. Our vloggers in turn, challenged their own audience to also step outside their comfort zones, take on their own personal challenges, and share the content with us for a chance to win a Pep Start adventure with friends. As well as launching through our vloggers own channels we augmented reach through Snapchat – a first for the Clinique brand.